OVERVIEW: Advocates for Climate Innovation, formerly the Linden Trust, focuses on market-based approaches that can provide long-term financing for policy work in climate change and conservation.
IP TAKE: Formerly the Linden Trust for Consevation, the Advocates for Climate Innovation rebranded and now offers six-figure grants to a number of climate and conservation groups. It has been particularly effective as a rainmaker through its role in brokering huge investments from other financial institutions and foundations. This is become an excellent ally of climate work. This funder takes a proactive approach and does not accept unsolicited proposals, but it does provides both grants (often unrestricted) and financing for long-term support of large-scale conservation projects. This funder is open to contact if you want to learn more about how it chooses its grantees. That said, getting through the door will require a straightforward networking approach and proven past success that is backed by financials and research.
PROFILE: Founded in 2006, Advocates for Climate Innovation (ACI) was first known as the Linden Trust for Conservation. The organization was created by Larry Linden, formerly a Partner at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs, and Roger Ullman, formerly a Managing Director at Merrill Lynch. It is led and staffed by a team of financial professionals with deep experience in investment and management. Linden received his Ph.D. from MIT and a B.S.E. from Princeton. He started his family foundation in 1993, which changed its name in 2005 to the Linden Trust for Conservation. Linden and Ullman’s background in consulting and finance inform’s LTC’s commitment to “seeking bipartisan and economically sound approaches to addressing critical conservation challenges.” The foundation ultimately seeks to “identify practical, efficient, and non-partisan solutions that allow people to find common ground and move forward.” ACI’s two main programs address Climate Policy and Conservation Finance and Environmental Markets.
Grants for Environmental Conservation and Climate Change
ACI’s efforts are entirely dedicated to conservation, largely through finance approaches to various challenges facing conservation. The organization promotes two climate policy initiatives: the inclusion of carbon dioxide removal efforts in U.S. policy and a carbon tax initiative. Additionally, the foundation funds programs in environmental markets, conservation finance and support for institutions whose goals are aligned with the Linden Trust. While programs have contracted in recent years that is because work has evolved to become more focused on its goals.
The aim of ACI’s climate policy initiatives is for the U.S. government to put in place a robust enough set of policies and programs to ensure that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) has a reasonable chance of closing the gap between actual and desired net emission levels in the U.S. by the middle of this century.” Work addresses carbon dioxide removal initiative, geothermal power and carbon pricing.
The foundation’s work in this area has included education, policy analysis, and advocacy and program design. Some past grantees are the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Carbon Capture Coalition, the Rhodium Group and the Energy Futures Initiative.
In recent years, ACI has “been deeply involved in policymaker education across the range of needed CDR policies, including those enacted in the Energy Act of 2020, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.”
- ACI’s Conservation Finance and Environmental Markets program works to secure all the financial and institutional resources needed to protect the environment via climate innovation.
- Recent grantees include ARPA for Life (Brazil), Forever Costa Rica, and expanding and financing the park system in Chilean Patagonia.
- Work to support environmental markets work towards reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation and reducing emissions from coastal ecosystems.
- The largest recipients include Resources for the Future and the WWF. The former has received as much as $600,000 in one recent year, and the latter closer to $1 million. This is pretty significant, considering that ACI usually only grants around $2 million a year. But it does give smaller, though still significant, amounts to other environmental groups, including World Resources Institute, the EDF, the NRDC, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
Important Grant Details:
Given its narrow, but deep support, ACI does not accept unsolicited proposals. However, grants range from a few thousand dollars to $2 million.
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